I take credit for this.

Harbinger*

/cjoin apac

^ Exactly.

No need to apologize. Most of us are just a bit... frustrated by the turn of events and as such are being a bit snappy. It's true, a low ping is not needed to excel. You can account for it. Even with ~250ms it's perfectly plausible to catch that 1-second interrupt and such. It just serves as another disadvantage to counteract.

You will eek out a bit more damage favouring Strength over Power for Augments. I wasn't calling you out for doing anything wrong - was simply stating that to advise incorrectly is well... Incorrect.

TEHEE is sad to see the transfers. You will be missed, Aurojiin. So very missed. /hug.

That third point. /cry.

If you advise someone to gear against min-maxing (Power > Mainstat), then you're doing it wrong.

/agree. +1

Firsly, appreciate the fact that you folks at BioWare gave us something substantial to work with. All these talks of "we have plans for the APAC servers but nothing concrete" were... a bit... frustrating to handle. Understandable, but frustrating. There are two main reasons you cited for not consolidating the APAC servers: The first I think ultimately is a non-issue. Whilst I full-well understand how play-styles are an important aspect of gameplay, throwing us onto an NA server into a community of people we (well, most of us, I assume) have never interacted with before, with high latency to boot... well. I can't help but feel we'll be seen as that small group of exchange students thrown into a pre-established high school environment. Maybe it won't be like that. RP communities will either need to reintegrate into a larger society or stay in their cliques, which are already probably going to be broken by the prospect of server transfers. The second, well. If there was a decision to turn this decision on its head and offer a server consolidation, I think you will find a more positive reaction. Sure, population is never going to "fantastic" but it will be better than what we've got now without making us sacrifice our community, our latency, etc etc. More to the point is that, sure, there are active voices on the forums regarding the issue. Sure, some people are so anti-losing-their-element-of-game-play that a transfer is what they want over a merge. But that doesn't speak for the many. Most people don't even check the forums. A brief log-in to prime-time APAC servers and a "Hey all. We're proposing a migration to NA servers instead of a consolidation. What are your thoughts on the matter?" would probably yield a lot of "/unsub"-esque responses. For relevance, there are threads on the three APAC servers right now about this: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=615131 - Dalborra http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=613718 - Gav Daragon http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=615104 - Master Dar'Nala And there's also this lovely thread on the Harbinger. It just screams "Welcome!" http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=615153 Offer transfers if you must. If that is what you *feel* is the right thing to do for the players. I personally think offering of transfers is a good thing. Forcing a merge into NA though, I think is a rather poor idea. Offer the transfers, time a month or two to see how the populations across the APAC servers go. Consolidate APAC servers. That way, those that want to leave for the "ohh shiny population numbers" get to leave. Those that want to "sacrifice" their playstyle stay as an APAC community get to do so without losing their friends, their ping, or their sense of worth as players in BioWare's eyes. I've already had too many friends say they're quitting since this announcement came out. I won't go as far as to say I will be joining them, but seriously. It is my personal opinion that both short-term and long term gain are going to be in their negatives due to this decision, should it go through. Definitely short-term.

Welp. There goes my 13ms ping, my character names, people knowing who I am... ... /cry.

Arguably the best build for Watchman Sentinel damage. Well, for *damage*, it is the best build. And honestly, you should not need to sacrifice that damage to go into Defensive Roll or Defensive Forms. If you do, look to your healers or your tanks. Or yourself, if you're taking unnecessary damage. You've got the best set of defensive cooldowns in the game as a Sentinel (Rebuke, Force Camouflage (after the first... 15 seconds of a fight), Saber Ward, Guarded by the Force). Throwing 30% AoE damage reduction on top of that, or 4% internal/elemental damage reduction is just... overkill. Oh man. I love it when I see a post like this. There are two reasons why 3/3 in Insight is the *superior* way to build a DPS Sentinel over 3/3 Steadfast. The first is that to go 3/3 Steadfast, you have to drop two points into either Jedi Crusader, or Defensive Forms. Now, both have a bit of an attractive appeal at first glance. On one hand, you get 4% internal/elemental damage reduction. That's cool. Some DoTs deal internal damage and less pressure on the healers is less pressure. The other hand gives you focus back when Rebuke ticks damage. More useful, because some pesky AoE or DoT-damage phases can become slightly higher DPS phases for you due to not having to strike *as* much. Woah. Wait a second. If I go 3/3 Steadfast, I can't go into 2/2 Swift Slash. 15% crit chance on Slash AND Dispatch? Oh man. How could you justify giving that up? Considering Dispatch is your single hardest-hitting ability as a Watchman Sentinel (and it pushes higher than Merciless in priority post-30% due to both that fact and, again, it mathematically crits 15% more often with 2/2 Swift Slash), and Slash is an often-used Focus-dump pre-30%. Both critting more often is good. Very good. Really very good. So very good it makes me English bad. So really here, you're trading 3% accuracy and either some situational focus or a pittance of damage mitigation for 6% burn crit chance (did I mention that because of Watchman, your burn crit damage is 30% higher? Why would you not want to buff your burn crit chance as far as possible?!) and 15% crit chance on your Focus-dump/occasional Cauterize proc, and, again, your *single hardest-hitting ability*. The second is because a bonus of 6% crit chance, in PvE, is exactly that. Unless a crit chance bonus brings you above 100%, it is as beneficial at a base of 10% crit as it is at a base of 80% crit as it is at 50% crit.

Take that back before you boost his ego too much!

Hah. Well, that is an improvement.

When did you get here? Go back to zoning out during bomber phases, sir. This basically sums it up though. The main reason why I, as a Vanguard tank, don't go for a healthpool buffer is because I have Aurojiin as a healer, and he has a masochistic personality. Seeing a tank drop from full health to 20% makes him giddy. That, and my way of displaying epeen as a tank is through having over 1.9k main stat.

"Did you see how fast Annihilator died? Omg man. That's crazy. He just got wrecked. Should have stacked more expertise."

*nod* Overload Saber should be used on cooldown anyways, regardless of momentary downtime... unless the downtime is going to exceed 12 seconds rendering it more-or-less pointless.

The guard range only applies the the split damage, which the tooltip states only applies to "incoming damage from enemy players". I'd like to hope most tanks can read a tooltip. The threat generation reduction and the damage reduction are unaffected by range. They only are if the guarded person distances the tank to such an extent where guard drops completely. At that point, it ceases to be a useful guard anyways. The best solution to healers drawing aggro is to cry because you have either ignorant, oblivious or simply uncoordinated members in your group. A tank should hold aggro on strongs/elites/champions: the mobs that both hurt, and last long enough to warrant being actively tanked. Even strongs can largely be ignored depending on the trash pull. With healthpools of ~16k, it is not terribly difficult for a single DPS to make it fall over in a small amount of time. The 5% mitigation is a bonus. In a few select fights you will guard a healer because of a combination of the damage reduction and the fact that aggro either means nothing or is trivial due to uptime (Dread Guards, Operator IX, Post-Phase One of TFB, EC Kephess (that one may be personal opinion)). However, guarding a healer in a HM FP is generally not the best use. Guarding a ranged DPS is incredibly viable. If the choice is between a decently geared Commando and a Sentinel, I will pick the Commando. If there is an annoying Sentinel that doesn't understand what the purpose of Force Camo is in the early stages of a fight, then... meh. That's what taunts are for, right? Providing they manage to out-threat me. As for the final statement, I'm a bit amused to be honest. At least you did clarify it wasn't an "automatic tell-all of their skill" - I would have jumped on that, being a DPS that initiates most HM FP fights before the tank. More runs than not, the tank defers to me to do it in the first place.

Usually you don't have focus to do this pre-boss fight.

+1 for knowing the things that I know about you.

I just ran the numbers. You get one green (270), blue (630) or purple (1,440) rep token per pack. If you get a certificate, it will take the place of the rep token. You do not get both from the same pack. Two hypercrates = 48 packs. Having received 20 certificates, you got 28 packs worth of rep tokens. Even if every single pack that did not give you a certificate gave you a purple rep token, you would only have 40,320 rep. Legend requires 70,000 rep. With that amount of rep you would have just exceeded Champion. Also, two hypercrates and you got 20 certificates? That is some amazing luck, sir.

One small note: Merciless on cooldown. This is largely dependent on your focus management. As you mentioned, you have to make sure you have the required amount of Focus to use this ability as soon as it comes off cooldown. Personal experience has me typically sitting around the ~8 Focus mark (using Zealous and Leap to recover post Overload/Merciless). Yes. That is what he is suggesting. Aiming for a certain crit chance percentage is not an advised thing. This is ultimately because critical chance is primarily made up of two factors: Mainstat and critical rating, both of which have their own *completely separate* diminishing return curves. Stack the former as much as you can without touching lettered mods (the really high mainstat, pitifully low offstat ones), and then go as far into crit rating as you *feel* is needed. Some go up to 250 rating. Others sit around the 150 mark. I personally like mine to be ~200. Having no crit rating is... not the best. Nor is investing ridiculous amounts of points into it. Diminishing returns can be a pain. As mentioned above, don't aim for a crit chance percentage. The Smuggler Buff is *completely* independent of your gearing and should not be factored in as a Sentinel. Consider it more of a lovely bonus.

No. No no no no no. More no. Did I mention no? Point for point, given the current theoretical maximum for Strength that is achievable in game, Strength is *always* better than Power. People look at crit as if there is a magical percentage at which you stop anything that gives crit gain and work towards something else. That's not how it works. The critical chance gain that Strength provides is on a completely different diminishing return curve than critical rating. The Strength critical chance curve is so incredibly shallow that you *cannot* reach a value for Strength where, point for point, Power becomes better in terms of damage output.

Not every! Some of us understand that our class has the best threat drop in the game. There are even a rare few that understand that some classes don't have the luxury of a proper threat drop (/hugs nearest Vanguard). But yes, guarding a Sentinel/Marauder is usually a poor idea. I would typically guard one over the healer though. Especially if that healer is Aurojiin. He will never get my guard.